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Sunday, August 17, 2008

It's not very often that the full moon falls on the one day between two music school weeks when we actually have time to go out and take advantage of it. There's this amazing famous alpine hike a few miles from where we live. You can drive up and up a hair-raisingly-precipitous logging road to a parking pull-out in the alpine and from there take a short easy 45-minute hike to the highest peak in the region. At the top you are ringed by all the other high peaks and ridges. It's an amazing 360-degree view, with the lake visible way way down below. For reasons that aren't clear, it's called Idaho Peak. Perhaps you can see Idaho from the top -- it's less than 90 miles, after all. It's the hike to do in the area. You always ask the tourists whether they've "been up Idaho yet." The snow is gone from early July to early September, and the alpine wildflowers peak in early August.

We've been up half a dozen times. The drive is not to be taken lightly, so it's not a trip we do every year. It had been four years since we last went, and yesterday I decided that the time had come to do a night hike in the full moon.

As it turned out Noah had a nasty cold and didn't feel up to going, so he and I stayed home. Chuck took the girls, which was convenient, because our 4WD vehicle only seats four (the van has ground clearance so low as to be problematic on this drive). They took a flashlight, but they didn't use it because the moon was so bright. And they didn't take a tripod, as you can see from the photo above, but the obligatory photos at the peak were taken anyway. The temperature was perfect and it was sooooo quiet up there. They arrived home exhilarated three hours later.